Is SEO dead or alive?

This is a question that is the argument for the past many years. The question will be is SEO worth this year or is SEO still working? While many conclude SEO is dead and valued no more, many argue that SEO is still alive and will not die any longer. Well for me, I would say that SEO is alive. It is just that the traditional SEO and methods have become outdated. With the passage of time, the methods of SEO has been improved and taken to a new level. It is not that traditional SEO methods are dead. The thing is that you won’t be able to move on just with the traditional SEO methods. The traditional methods have to go along with the modern methods.

Those who argue that SEO is dead, may not have noticed that every year new improvements are being brought to the SEO industry. The Internet is playing a very major role in our day-to-day lives. So are search engines. As long as search engines exist, SEO rankings will be important. Many new technologies are rising every day. This may change the way we interact and explore the internet. But as of now, search engines will be a factor. So optimizing your information for these constantly evolving algorithms will never go out of style.

All the major search engines are making changes for increasing the standard. This will bring an increase in standard in the SEO also. The new updates have made high-quality content vital, urging relevant context and semantics within the content. The new changes have made SEO more important than before. To cope up with the modifications, the websites have to offer proper SEO practices within the content. The websites should be up-to-date with the SEO trends in the industry. If you want your content to be in the first page results in a search engine, you need have SEO.

As the mobile phone users are increasing, inquiries from mobile devices are also increasing. So websites that do not have a mobile version is going to become extinct, or else. They have to increase their user experience. This was not the case 10 years ago when people searched each and everything through PCs. Thus websites have to meet different standards to find their space in the search results. Without an SEO, it will be difficult to meet all the standards required to come to the first page of the search results. As per the improvisations made in the criteria to be in the search results, you should keep on updating your website. This is possible only if you have an SEO.

Most people who do not value SEO give value to the search engines. But the fact is that search engines do not condemn the use of SEO practices. Rather, they are giving advice on how to properly utilize it. So the thing is that the old way of using is dead. But SEO is still alive with new trends and modern methods. Search engine companies always tend to produce the most accurate results for their users. So they provide guidance to web creators about what type of content that they are creating and how they manipulate the SEO to best fit.

The world is witnessing rapid changes in the technological world. Within no time, IoT (Internet of Things), AI (Artificial Intelligence), and algorithm-driven algorithms will take over the environment around you. So wondering if SEO is still relevant? I will make it clear. It will be even more important to SEO-optimize a site for M2M communication in IoT. In no time, everything around you will be connected to the internet. So SEO will have to play a very important role then. When it is people, they will scan a page to find the most optimal results for their needs. But when the case is of machines, they will be forced to find contextual clues to determine both the reader’s and writer’s intent. Only SEO will be helpful to cater to this situation. Machines are not going to replace the internet. They will be just an addition to the growth of the internet. The number of people searching on the internet is also not going to end. Instead, people will be searching from watches, cars, and other connected devices that are also performing their own searches. Like now, traffic will keep on going. So SEO will have to work a little harder when IoT becomes a reality.

In the coming future, the searches of people may become a little different. We may shift from text searches to voice searches. The difference will be that when more words are spoken, long-tail keywords become more important, and writing in a conversational tone is necessary to sound human when your words are converted to speech. So it can become likely that only the top result will be displayed. All the search assistants like Siri, Cortana, Google Now etc., will provide exactly the one result you’re searching for. This will be another thing that will make SEO more vital and competitive.

This is going to be a paradigm shift. When the searches narrow to the exact search results, websites will have to bring a change in their strategies. Providing the best page results is also a way to promote their voice search programs by the companies. So this will become a great factor in the coming days and SEO will be the one that will come with helping hands. Anyways, the people searching on the internet for a variety of things is not going to end any sooner, be it through text searches or voice searches. As long as people go on searching, SEO will be alive.

Augmented reality and virtual reality are the next two things that are going to bring changes to the internet and the search engines. The basics of search will be fundamentally unchanged even with VR that provides new UI and UX. To draw more traffic, you will still have to optimize your page with visual and easily digestible content. Both augmented reality and VR will be bringing new innovative marketing avenues, but the content will always remain the King while considering traffic. In the coming days more and more VR and AR headsets will be used to connect to the Internet instead of traditional monitors. They will become another way for people browse and view web content.

Some people think that the new technologies and devices that are arriving soon will mark the end of SEO. But this is far away from the truth. The fact is that online connectivity is more popular and important than ever. The web is the main door people rely on for entertainment, information, and the ability to conduct business. With the coming of new technologies and gadgets, more and more people will connect to the Internet to perform more and more searches. This will keep SEO alive. It will not be just alive, but more important each and every day. When the number of devices used for browsing increases, people will be looking for more information as fast as possible. So the brands and the entrepreneurs will be aiming to produce the best content available the quickest. There will be new strategies and plans to execute this. SEO will have to play a very important role in these strategies and plans.

SEO is one of the few industries where change is equated with death. It is important that you understand the meaning of change and death. The people who declare SEO is dead does not realize that SEO is just evolving. There are changes in the strategies, but it is only towards betterment and not a death at all. When technology evolves, SEOs will constantly deal with new ways of searching, new devices to search on, and new types of searches. Anyways, people search. They would want to know more about the world that is changing around them. So the competition for the first page results will go on.

So the statement SEO is dead can be found as just provocative. So the ones who still believe that SEO is dead should understand the factor that the way you are doing SEO might have died. You may have optimized your H1s and meta tags and you’ve built a few (hopefully white hat) links. Now sitting back and dreaming your site to reach the first position of the search results will disappear just as a dream. This strategy is not going to work anymore. Even though there is no precise formula for SEO anymore, there are best practices you can follow to get a good outcome. Figuring which buttons to push is not going to win you in SEO. You have to go for the modern SEO tactics that will work for you. What you have to do is just focus on the experience of your site. Think about the ways to make it better. You have to go deep into the mind of your ideal visitor and figure what makes them tick. You need to solve for your user, not for the search engine. Don’t focus on getting users to rapidly consume and share that content, rather focus on creating remarkable content that is clearly head and shoulders above its competitors. So forget the saying that “SEO is dead” and repeat in your mind that “Long live SEO.”